Colombo (News 1st): Milinda Moragoda, founder of the Pathfinder Foundation and former Cabinet Minister, called on the new Government to refrain from holding Provincial Council elections prior to the parliamentary elections.

He suggested that the government should, as part of the expected constitutional overhaul, seek to mobilize the necessary two-thirds majority to repeal the 13th Amendment and thereby abolish the Provincial Council system at the conclusion of parliamentary elections.

Moragoda reiterated his earlier proposal that the Provincial Councils should be abolished and power directly devolved to empowered and reconfigured local, urban and municipal councils. Since these bodies operate closest to the citizenry, they are in a better position to address and solve community-level problems.

The original intent of the 13th amendment enacted in 1987 was to create more provincial autonomy in order to help resolve Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem.  Instead, this structure has proven to be superfluous, expensive, divisive and fraught with inefficiency. Finally, he also proposed that an empowered senate/upper house be set up to address issues concerning religious, ethnic, and regional diversity.

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